Every dogsbody has his day

Until now they usually knew John Edwardson, 57, as the dogsbody. It is a case of every dogsbody having his day.

The club's all time record aggregate run scorer - 5,502 for the B team, 194 for the firsts - he is a qualified coach and for 28 years a committee member, including eight as fixture secretary. He is junior teams manager, odd job man, fund-raiser, dressing room cleaner, bingo caller, tea maker, disc jockey and has umpired more than 500 games in Durham County and NYSD leagues.

Even when he won Darlington's "Service to sport" award last year, however, the citation talked of him as the general dogsbody.

"I just love this cricket club and spend almost all my time here when I'm not working," he says. "It's the highest honour imaginable, but I don't think I'm going to get all snooty now that they've made me president."

At Haughton secondary school in Darlington his sports master was Colin Atkinson, remembered for his unbounded enthusiasm, for playing football in his wellies and for his elderly Austin 8.

"He'd take us to games in it. Whenever it conked out he had to get out and use the starting handle. We were 12 or 13 and didn't know where to put ourselves for embarrassment."

Atkinson, brought up in Norton-on-Tees but a former pupil of St Mary's Grammar School in Darlington, represented Durham at five sports and also played Minor Counties cricket for Northumberland before being taken to Somerset in 1960 by former Durham wicket keeper Harold Stephenson - then Somerset's captain - and appointed to the staff of Millfield School.

In 1965 he succeeded Stephenson as captain, much to the disgust of Australian all rounder - "it's because he's a public school teacher and I'm a chicken farmer" - and in 1971 became Milfield's headmaster. He was awarded the CBE in 1979.

When he died in 1990, aged just 59, he was chairman of both Somerset and of HTV West and tipped for the chairmanship of the TCCB.

C R M Atkinson, at any rate, took young Edwardson to Feethams to be coached by Norman Owen, the former Bishop Auckland and Durham professional.

Finding the senior men "a bit aloof", he played first for Haughton and then Cockerton before returning to Darlington in 1974, and awfully glad that he did.

He is 6ft 3ins, built like a bowler, remembered only for his batting.

A self-employed builder, the president will continue to make the teas, do the odd jobs - "a few seats to mend, the nets to square, some painting needs doing" - to check the bingo and to work the scoreboard.

Even the bairns know him as Big E, but may have to be knocked down to size.

"In future," says the tail up dogsbody, "it's Mr President to them all."

A position little less lofty, the column is - of course - president of Darlington Hole in the Wall FC, newly qualified for the Darlington and District League Invitation Trophy final for the third successive season.

"Invitation" is a euphemism meaning also-ran. In total, these past three seasons, they've won two games in the competition.

Few punches pulled in the acrimonious 1-0 win over league leaders Ferryhill Greyhound, however, nor in the match report in the Hole in the Wall programme.

"Every so often," it begins, "something comes along that is so satisfying that it makes life much more worth living, be it finding a tenner you'd forgotten about in a shirt pocket, waking up in time to go to work and then realising it's Saturday or winning a football match that the other side just didn't want to lose...."

Alf Bond, the man who ruined my life

The name was Bond, Alf Bond, and the one armed referee in the 1954 Amateur Cup final is still remembered by Backtrack readers.

Bishop Auckland fan Keith Belton not only saw the second replay at Ayresome Park - when Bond controversially disallowed a Bishops' goal for a foul on Crook's Bobby Davison - but still has the newsreel film.

"I've watched it hundreds of times and still can't see what was wrong with it," says Keith, now in Stockton.

"I remember jumping up and down until someone pointed out that he'd ruled it out. Alf Bond is the man who ruined my life."

Arnold Alton was there, too - short trousers, shorter shrift. "Even in those days he was known as the one armed bandit and by Bishop Auckland supporters a whole lot worse.

"It was even suggested that he was related to someone at Bond Brothers buses in Willington, and therefore biased."

Arnold reckons that Bond booked players by raising his leg and resting the notebook on his thigh - an interesting image.

Former Football League referee Terry Farley flags in his fraternity's favour, however. "Having one arm detracted neither from Alf's ability nor from the respect in which he was held," says Terry, from Newton Ayclifffe.

Bond subsequently ran a paper shop in Fulham. He died in 1986.

Amateur Cup Final, 1933. Last Friday's column wondered what on earth Ralph "Bullet" Smith had done after the match to get himself banned for a year.

Jack Moran - now 80, then Bishop Auckland's tea boy - offers the answer. Smith was due to collect a loser's medal: he told the FA to get lost.

"Just lost his blob, wouldn't have it, wouldn't go up for it," says Jack. "The FA was like Judge Jeffrys in those days, even worse than they are now."

Chiefly he suspects the hand of Durham FA president and First World War hero Lt Col Thomas Dowling, though Bullet's firing squad was probably led by FA president Sir Charles Clegg, there to present the awards.

Smith, a Middlesbrough-based engine driver, played football for Stockton for 16 years. "Wonderful player, exceptional close control, could have signed for Middlesbrough any time he wanted," recalls Jack.

"He'd be doing all right on the railway, of course, and he might have had a few bob at Stockton."

Stockton had lost 4-1 to Kingstonian in the final replay at Feethams after right back Joe Thompson was carried off early in the game. Injury added to Bullet's perceived insult, the only curious - indeed suggestive - feature was the Echo correspondent's insistence that Stockton had returned quietly to Sparks's caf after the match.

Jack Mahon had been tea boy with dear old Charlie Hopper, former local councillor, Category D fighter and Eldon Lane sub-postmaster. Stockton, he says, would always soak their footballs in tubs of water to make them heavier.

"Whenever they came to Bishop we sent out for three new balls, light 'uns. They might kick one or two out of the ground, but we'd always have a third in reserve."

Ralph Smith was 35 at the time of the Kingstonian final, the mayor unsuccessfully joining the appeal for leniency. After his gold medal wobbler, he never played for Stockton again.

Valiant efforts notwithstanding, the pressure may be telling at the Reynolds Arena. Quakers fan Steve Jones, at the match with Torquay last Saturday, reports that in the Concourse bar a pint was £2.20 and a half £1.

"Can I have two halves in a pint glass, then?" asked Steve.

"Certainly," said the barman, "that'll be £2."

When Sunderland won the FA Cup in 1973, Hibs lost the Scottish League Cup final.

When Sunderland lost the 1992 FA Cup final, Hibs won the Scottish League Cup.

This year, when Sunderland are again in the semi-final - initially successful against Hartlepool, Ipswich, Birmingham and Sheffield United - Hibs have just lost the Scottish League Cup final, to Livingston.

The coincidence is pointed out by "superstitious" Stadium of Light season ticket holder Martyn Coombs from Bedale, North Yorkshire. "I need an y sign that we're going to win at Old Trafford," he says.

A PPS on Frankie Baggs, Hartlepool entertainer extraordinary. Fenwick Scott, now in Crook, recalls that as nippers he and Frankie both attended Sunniside primary school, near Tow Law, where Frankie's dad was village polliss during the war. There were five Baggs bairns, says Fenwick, but little Frank always seemed the bright spark. Bless him, he'd looked on the sunny side ever since.

Ted Wainwright, the Yorkshire and England cricketer about whom we wrote on Tuesday, was clearly more than just a bit of a Tyke - as Alf Hutchinson in Darlington points out.

Wainwright followed "Happy Jack" Ulyett into the Yorkshire team in 1888, his own disposition rather less sunny.

Subsequently he became cricket coach at Shrewsbury School, where his assistant was the young Neville Cardus. "There was something sinister about him," wrote Cardus. "Every night he got drunk as a matter of course, quietly and masterfully."

Wainwright also fearfully upbraided the headmaster, the Rev Cyril Alington, for riding his bike across the cricket field. "Ah don't give a bugger who he was, he ought to have had more sense," he observed.

Alington sympathised - "but I do think he could have admonished me in language a little less drastic."

Alington became Dean of Durham from 1933-51 and may not have had his troubles to seek there, either. Wasn't it who whom the miners mistakenly threw into the Wear, when they meant it to be the Bishop all along?

And finally...

The last side to make a first FA Cup final appearance at Wembley (Backtrack, March 30) was - of course - Middlesbrough.

Still with the old pot, Brian Shaw invites the identity of the player who has made most FA Cup appearances in his career.

Back from an evening with Sir Bobby, the column appears again on Tuesday.

Published: 02/04/2004